ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of healthcare chaplaincy (increasingly called spiritual care) in the United States. We briefly outline the history of healthcare chaplaincy as a profession before describing who healthcare chaplains are, how they are trained, what they do, and what effects recent studies suggest their work has upon patients, family members, and staff. We also consider the authority by which they do their work and ask how religious diversity—including growing numbers of people with no religious affiliation—informs that work. We conclude with brief reflections on what the work of chaplains suggests, as a case, about contemporary intersections between religion, medicine, and health. As a group, healthcare chaplaincy has professionalized over time, transitioning from local religious leaders to those trained through clinical pastoral education to those board-certified by their colleagues in the profession. The people doing the work have diversified, though mainline Protestants remain overrepresented. Most chaplains today serve people from a range of spiritual and religious backgrounds, including none, and this ability to move among people is central to their training.
